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Data access governance insights for SharePoint sites

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  • 3 minutes to read

Information icon Some features in this article require Microsoft Syntex - SharePoint Advanced Management

As sprawl and oversharing of SharePoint sites increase with exponential data growth, organizations need to help govern their data. Data access governance reports provide info that helps you govern access to SharePoint data. The reports help you discover sites that contain potentially overshared or sensitive content. You can use these reports to assess and apply appropriate security and compliance policies.

Requirements

This feature requires a Microsoft Syntex - SharePoint Advanced Management license.

Access the reports in the SharePoint admin center

  1. Go to the SharePoint admin center, and sign in with an account that has admin permissions for your organization.

  2. In the left pane, select Reports > Data access governance. The following reports are currently available:

    • Sharing links
    • Sensitivity labels applied to files Data access governance page

The Sharing links reports help you identify potential oversharing by seeing the sites where users created the most new sharing links. A report is available for the following links:

  • "Anyone" links: This report gives you a list of sites in which the highest number of Anyone links were created. These links let anyone access files and folders without signing in.
  • "People in the organization" links: This report gives you a list of sites in which the highest number of “People in the organization” links were created. These links can be forwarded internally and let anyone in the organization access files and folders.
  • "Specific people" links shared externally: This report gives you a list of sites in which the highest number of “specific people” links were created for people outside the organization. Sharing links page

Run the reports

To get the latest data for a report, run the report. You can run all reports or select individual reports to run. It might take a few hours for reports to run. To check if a report is ready or when it was last updated, see the Status column.

Note

Each report can be run only once in 24 hours.

View the reports

When a report is ready, select it to view the data. Each sharing link report includes:

Download the reports

You can download a .csv file to get the same information for up to 10,000 sites.

Sensitivity labels for files reports

The "Sensitivity labels for files" reports help you control access to sensitive content by finding sites storing Office files that have sensitivity labels applied. You can review these sites to ensure the correct policies are applied.

Add the reports

You can add a report for each sensitivity label you want to track. Adding a report runs it for the first time.

Note

You can add reports only for sensitivity labels with a scope that includes "File".

Add sensitivity label reports panel

Run reports

To get the latest data for a report, run the report. You can run all reports or select individual reports to run. It might take a few hours for reports to run. To check if a report is ready or when it was last updated, see the Status column.

Note

Each report can be run only once in 24 hours.

Reports for sites with files labeled Confidential and Highly confidential

Download reports

After you run a report, select it to download the data. The report includes:

Limitations or known issues

  • These reports work only if you have non-pseudonymized report data selected for your organization. To change this setting, you must be Global Administrator. Go to the Reports setting in the Microsoft 365 admin center and clear Display concealed user, group, and site names in all reports.
  • Data in these reports might be delayed by up to 48 hours. In new tenants, it might take a few days for data to be available and for these reports to be generated successfully.